Humor by John Christmann
The Eighth Wonder Of The World
On Sunday evening my wife wanted to watch the Emmys, the televised award show in which television awards itself for excellence in television.
I wasn’t sure how they could wring three hours of broadcast excellence from a medium notorious for lame programming until they offered up an award for Best Design of Rolling Credits in a Dramatic Series Airing on Tuesday. It promised to be a very long evening.
So I excused myself to watch the Giants play Dallas on our flat-screen High Definition (HD) television set from the comfort of a couch.
We bought one of these TVs a couple of years ago when we thought we could afford it. I stood awestruck in front of a vast wall of television sets at Best Buy that were all broadcasting the World Series. The picture was amazing.
“Look at that,” said the salesman as Manny Ramirez prepared to project a large wad of high definition goober onto the field, “you can actually see his nose hairs”.
I bought the TV in spite of this inspired sales pitch because I liked the set’s thin profile: I believe television should be watched, not seen.
It turns out the Sunday night football game was held in the brand new $1.1 Billion Cowboy Stadium, which among many other award-worthy feats of construction sports the world’s largest HD television set. The 600 ton screen hangs above the field from a retractable domed roof. The set is six stories tall and offers 25,000 square feet of viewing area.
To give you an idea, the cable box for this TV is bigger than the Alamo.
Given the novelty of this technology, for much of the broadcast the cameras were incestuously focused on the huge suspended screen so that I was essentially watching HD in HD. In High Definition squared I could see Eli Manning’s nose hairs as he dropped back to complete a pass.
To give you an idea, they were bigger than Lebron James.
Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, purchased the back-to-back pair of Mitsubishi TVs for $40 Million dollars. He was quick to point out that the technology would enable every sports fan—from those sitting in the upper deck (which is technically in Oklahoma) to those in the lower deck—to see “the color of our player’s eyes”.
At the time everyone thought he was talking about the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, and the potential for six stories of high definition cleavage generated considerable enthusiasm among Dallas football fans despite the projected increase in ticket prices.
And this came to pass, because on the Sunday night season opener over 100,000 people paid $125 a ticket and higher to sit in the new Dallas stadium and watch the Cowboys lose on TV.
Lucky for them Jerry Jones didn’t want to watch the Emmys. Lucky for them President Obama didn’t schedule half time to discuss his healthcare plan. Lucky for them the cheerleaders were all well groomed.
Of course the proliferation of high definition screens at large venues is nothing new.
A while ago I saw Springsteen in Giants Stadium. I paid over $150 for two tickets and watched most of the concert on the overhead JumboTron using binoculars, because from where we were sitting it looked as though Bruce was playing with the Flea Street Band.
Bruce was a little out of synch with the screen since it took the music—which is still technically restrained by the speed of sound—a few days to reach my ears. But it was fun to see him from the prospective of a shaving mirror.
“It’s almost like watching it on our TV at home” I yelled to my wife, “only the sound is worse.”
I was right. A month later we watched a Springsteen concert broadcast in HD and surround sound from the comfort of our family room. “Look,” I told my wife as the Boss stomped and sweated his way through Born in the USA, “you can see his nose hairs.”
Of course watching at home you don’t get to share the experience with thousands of exuberant fans fueled by unrestrained beer in wide mouth cups.
With the advent of high definition broadcasts, the value in attending stadium events brings up the obvious question: How can I get one of these TVs home in my car?
But at $20 million a set this is still a little out of my price range. So, like everyone else I will wait until the price comes down and zoning is approved for six story residential television.
In the mean time, let’s hope that television programming improves.
And the award for best nose hair in a dramatic series goes to . . .
© 2009 Dadinthebox.com